The Five-Point Peace Plan: a Weyanized version of
Necker’s Cube
By: Embaie Ferrow
December 1, 2004

The Necker
Cube, named after a Swiss crystallographer, is a pictures
of an unusual cube that appeared to assume different orientations as one
continued to look at it. If, for example, you look at the green dot in
the figure for a few seconds, you will se that the same green spot flip
its location back and forth. You need to be patient to see the flip.

The Eritrean and Ethiopian web sites, these few days, have been flooded
by articles dealing on the ‘new 5-points peace proposal’ of the Weyane regime in Ethiopia. What is the message and
target of this new initiative? And most all what is new in it? Is the proposal
real diplomatic breakthrough or is it a Necker’s Cube
version of diplomatic illusion?

I hope to demonstrate that
the whole escapade, old or new, is what the Commission referred to ‘an attempt to reopen the
substance of the April Decision and that the boundary should be varied so as to
take better account’ of what the TPLF regime calls ‘human and physical
geography’. In
this respect ‘the new initiative’ is not much different from the old mechanism
of dialogue proposed by the PM when, in a letter written to the UNSC in October
8, 2003, he rejected the decision of the Commission and labelled it unfair and
illegal. They are the two orientations of the same Necker’s
Cube.

By coming with different
proposals, now and then, what the regime hopes to achieve is to hijack the
Algiers Peace Treaty, undermine the role of the Commission and its legal statue
and turn it into a political issue for the UN and others actors to turn it into
a ‘give and take’ deal. This is not a new strategic move by the TPLF for
bringing peace between Eritrea and Ethiopia, but a tactical manoeuvre to
gain the political grounds lost since it officially rejected the decision of
the Commission. TPLF
knows very well that ‘the Commission has always made it clear that it has not
been given the power to vary the boundary delimited in the April Decision’ and that ‘it did not
confer on the Commission, the power to vary the boundary in the process of
demarcation for the purpose of meeting local human needs’. What are these
five points then? And how should Eritreans react to
the proposal? But first a few reminders on the nature of the enemy of the
Eritrean people are in place.

One should never forget that,
as Eritreans, we are dealing here with the authors of
the Tigray Manifesto of 1976, the architects behind
the declaration of war on Eritrea in 1998, the masterminds of the subsequent
mass deportation of Eritreans residing in Ethiopia
and Ethiopians of Eritrean origin on grounds of eye pigmentation, and the
anti-peace elements that kept the Algiers Peace Treaty and the peoples of the
two states hostage for the last four years.

In the first point, the regime commits itself to ‘resolve the dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea only and only through
peaceful means’. The
dispute, and here I am referring to the boarder dispute between the two
countries, was resolved when the two parties signed the Algiers Peace Treaty
four years ago, a peaceful mean of conflict resolution endorsed and guaranteed
by international bodies including the UN, AU, EU, US and the hosting Algerian
Government. This was made clear to the PM of the Ethiopia on Oct 3, 2003 by a
letter written by the President of the UNSC, Sir Emyr
Jones Parry, in which he informed the PM that for ‘the Security Council is
clear that the framework for establishing a lasting peace between Ethiopia and
Eritrea was agreed by both parties in Algiers in 2000’. What is worrying in
the first article of the five-point ‘new initiative’ is the hidden threat by
the regime that‘even
if the present problems were to be resolved by some other means’, and here
it is referring to the enforcement of the provisions of the Algiers Treaty by
the UNSC, ‘unless there is readiness to resolve problems peacefully and
through dialogue, war and conflict will continue to be great possibilities
whenever new problems arise’.

In the second point of the proposal, the regime declares to
resolve ‘the root causes of the conflict through dialogue with the view to
normalizing relations between the two countries’. I fully agree with the
contention of the regime that once the provisions of the Algiers Agreement are
fully met, then normalization between the two peoples and their governments can
be pursued by dialogue. The tension between the two countries can be diffused
only when the regime abides by the rule of law and accepts the finding of the
Commission without reservations. The repeated attempts of the regime to derail
the whole work of the Commission and replace it with alternative mechanisms,
new and old, will not contribute to the normalization of relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia.

The third point of the ‘new proposal’ is revealing of the
nature of the regime in Ethiopia. The regime declares that it
accepts, in principle, the Ethiopia-Eritrea Boundary Commission Decision. The
statement was made not out of conviction or commitment to the Algiers Treaty,
as it still ‘considers the decision of the
Commission indeed illegal and unjust’, but because the regime finds it ‘useful
and proper to accept, in principle, the decision of the Boundary Commission’.What makes an illegal and unjust decision
useful and proper?

There are three possible scenarios why the regime finds it
useful and proper to accept the decision of the Commission. The first has to do
with the coming election. The regime knows well that in a fair and open
election, a regime composed of an ethnic minority like the TPLF has no chance
of taking power democratically.It is
counting on the opposition of the Ethiopian peoples to internal and external
war to mobilize the ‘Ethiopian people to support its peace agenda
wholeheartedly with full confidence in the Government's commitment to peace and
in its readiness to adopt necessary decision for peace’. The second
scenario could be its desperate attempt to isolate the Eritrean Government from
its people. It hoped to demonstrate that the Eritrean Government, by rejecting
the ‘new approach and new peace plan’ harbours an anti-peace agenda. By
waving a seemingly olive branch, a symbol of peace, the regime is hoping that
the Eritrean people would ‘understand Ethiopia's full commitment to peace’ and endorse it.
Fortunately, olive tree does not only grow in Eritrea but it symbolizes its
revolution and its commitment to live in peace with its neighbours. The offer
by the Eritrean Government to postpone its referendum for two years to
stabilize the political situation in Ethiopia is one such example. And the
acceptance of the decision of the arbitration on its conflict with Yemen is another example. The
Eritrean people know the smell of real olive branch and can’t be cheated by a
cheap plastic one from Addis. The third scenario could be an attempt to gain
the moral high ground the regime lost to Eritrea by rejecting outright the
decisions of the Commission. It hopes that ‘the fact that now Ethiopia has accepted the decision,
in principle, should also help to remove this concern of the international
community’.

The other important component of the third point of the ‘new
peace initiative’ of the regime in Ethiopia is its conditionality. In
fact, the insincerity of the regime to resolve the problem it has with the
Commission and UNSC is exposed properly in the conditionality imposed by the
statement. The demarcation of the boarder is the sole responsibility of the
Commission and the parties concerned can’t impose conditions on how the
Commission is to demarcate the boarder. But as BBC reported a day after the
Ethiopian parliament endorsed the ‘five-point peace plan’ that is exactly what the PM had in
mind when he said’ no attempts would be made to demarcate the border without
dialogue in accordance with the peace proposal’; and added that ‘no
demarcation would be carried out, without dialogue, in areas that could affect
peace’. This shows that the ‘new proposal’ is not different from the call
for alternative mechanisms made earlier by the regime, two visual illusions of
the same Necker,s Cube. The
‘new initiative’ confirms the fear of the Commission that still‘the main thrust of the Ethiopian comments is that the
boundary should be varied so as to take better account of human and physical
geography’.

The fifth and last point of the ‘new proposal’ is a clear
attempt by the regime to challenge the authority of the Commission and an
arrogant attempt to dictate on how the Commission should exercise its
authority. Article
4(2) of the December 2000 Agreement mandates the Commission “to delimit and
demarcate” the border between the Parties. And yet in this article the
regime threatens the Commission that any ‘attempt to implement the
decision of the Boundary Commission, as is, might lead to a serious escalation,
of the tension between the two countries and thereby undermine the peace’. The regime
knows well that Article
14(A) of the Demarcation Directions provides that the ‘Commission has no
authority to vary the boundary line. If it runs through and divides a town or
village, the line may be varied only on the basis of an express request agreed
between and made by both Parties’. And yet it states that ‘the acceptance by Ethiopia, in principle,
of the decision of the Commission’ is conditional on the ‘adherence to the principle
of give and take in the course of implementing the decision’. The four
points of the ‘new proposal’ of the regime in Ethiopia amounts to what the
Commission observed in 2003 that the five-point peace proposal is not a new
initiative but an old‘attempt to reopen
the substance of the April Decision, not withstanding Ethiopia’s repeated
statements, made both before and since, of its acceptance of the Decision’. The regime
should remember that ‘the
jurisdiction and powers of the Commission extend to its taking cognizance of,
and where necessary making appropriate decisions on, any matter it finds
necessary for the performance of its mandate to delimit and demarcate the
boundary’. And
the only option the parties have by the Algiers Peace Treaty is to abide by the
fact that the decision of the Commission is final and binding.